Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/117

 head at sight of the little girl with the kneeling woman.

"Mrs. Ellison, I'm so sorry I was delayed Run along to your play, Martha dear," she commanded briskly. "Matron wants to talk to the nice lady. Run away; that's a good girl."

The visitor rose, puzzled at her tone of impatience. But the thin-faced child hesitated only a second, during which her deep blue eyes searched for something in Mrs. Ellison's expression with a solemn intensity. Then she wheeled without a word and walked slowly away toward a group of children near by. At her approach, however, they promptly turned and left her standing there, leaning against the trunk of a giant white oak that dwarfed her small body.

watched the by-play with a queer pang. "Who is that child?" she murmured. "There's there's something different about her."

"Martha?" The matron's laugh of exasperation knifed into her mood. "I'm sure you wouldn't care to take on that responsibility! She's really our problem child. Doesn't get on with the other children and constantly breaks our petty rules here. Oh, I don't mean she's deliberately bad, but—"

"Just a misfit?" The tall brown-haired visitor nodded her sympathy. "Perhaps it's the mother's interference. I understand from little Martha that she visits her quite often, and that's always hard on a child's morale. A pity she couldn't just take her away from here and support her the best way she"

Mrs. Ellison broke off, conscious that the matron was smiling at her quizzically.

"My dear," the orphanage head spread her hands, "that child has no mother — she died over a year ago. Tuberculosis, I'm told, aggravated by night work in a cotton mill. I see I must explain our little Martha to you

"The poor baby had such a shock, she's never been able to adjust herself. Some minds, tortured beyond endurance, fall into amnesia as an escape. Others—like poor little Martha's—simply build up a dream-world in which they need not face the cruel truth. She has a positive fixation that her mother is beside her at all times. 'Why, I can see her in the night, can't you?' she'll say, time and again. Carries on long imaginary conversations in the ward after lights-out, so that the other children complain of her keeping them awake. They don't dislike her, but I think they're a bit afraid of her."

"Afraid?" Mrs. Ellison quirked an eyebrow at the absurdity. "Why on earth should anyone be afraid of that pitiful little mite?"

The matron fidgeted, then gave a nervous laugh. "Well"—she averted her gaze sheepishly—"well, it is odd. Some unexplainable things have happened since the child has been here at the Home with us.

"I must tell you first that Martha's mother was a remarkable woman. Physically a wreck, and morally There was no father, you understand. A drunken sailor, most probably, as the woman seems to have been a cheap dance-hall hostess before her child was born in a charity hospital.

"But little Martha's birth seemed to bring out the best in her—a fierce maternal instinct. It happens often—rather proving, I think, the divinity in all mankind. Anyway, the mother changed her mode of living at once, got a job in the mill, and literally killed herself working for her child.